Rebel Lib Dem MPs send signals to Clegg but may harm their future

Share via

All governments suffer backbench rebellions. The danger for Nick Clegg is
that, once blooded, some of his backbenchers graduate from one-off dissenter
to serial rebel.

For the Lib Dems, that more than a dozen MPs are prepared to vote against
higher tuition fees is more ominous than it may appear at first sight.

By doing so they are tearing at the fabric of the coalition agreement, which
gave Lib Dem MPs a dispensation to abstain, not to vote against, this
specific policy. All but one of the 57 Lib Dems MPs backed the agreement in
May. Even the sole dissenter,